by Ursula Rani Sarma

Birmingham Rep presents its powerful production of Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, which has sold over 38 million copies worldwide and is Hosseini’s spiritual sequel to The Kite Runner.

In 1992 in an Afghanistan ravaged by war, an orphaned Laila is left alone in an increasingly threatening world. Her older neighbour Rasheed is quick to open his home and takes Laila as his second wife.

Rasheed’s first wife Mariam has no choice but to accept her younger, and now pregnant, rival. As the Taliban take over, life for all of them becomes a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, and the two women find themselves unlikely allies.